Join the Redshirt Brigade of unforgiving aircraft

[Klapaucius]

Having spent the better part of last night trying to get an aircraft with only six parts into the air and land it again (I did, once), I got curious about who else may have aircraft they would like to share that served the purpose intended, but were very risky and required precise skill. The real life analogue would be the GeeBee.

This is not a place for aircraft that are just plain bad, poorly designed or structurally unsound (that would cover 80% of what I have ever built), but rather planes that are difficult, twitchy, cranky and yet compelling. I've created a Red Shirt Brigade hangar on KerbalX as well. The name comes from the famous Redshirts of the original Star Trek, who tended to die with great regularity.  Feel free to add to it.  Spaceplanes welcome.

My example:

The goal was to create a craft that could take off and land like a standard plane (no VTOL, no chutes) with as few parts as possible. I got it down to 6.  Takeoff is reasonably easy.  I DID succeed in landing this (once) with very precise use of the reverse thrust on the Wheesely. This is important since the exits are blocked and you cannot EVA. I tried unblocking them and that little bit of change made it unusable.   There is also an after-burning variant that requires bailing out of it since its stall speed is way higher than what the landing gear can handle. Fortunately, you can EVA out of that one. The increased thrust of the Panther seems to compensate.

 

And this one, which was in response to this challenge  to go as fast as possible below 1000 meters. It is a total deathtrap, but it went 1700 meters per second at 1335 altitude. It was not the winner, but it gave a respectable showing.  I think takeoff speed was over 400 meters per second.  Oh, what we sacrifice for glory!

 

 

 

 

Edited May 19, 2018 by Klapaucius